You Look Different in Real Life

by Jennifer Castle

  “It changes the kind of filmmaker you are,” adds Lance, “if you set things up.”

  If you set things up. Should I say it? Yeah, what the hell. I’m not feeling desperate anymore. Just mad.

  “So what was that with Keira, last time?”

  Leslie looks down at her notebook, and Lance winces like he’s been poked in the ribs.

  “That,” Lance says slowly, “was a conversation that Marcus Jones would have had with his daughter regardless of whether or not we were there.”

  I remember reading that same line as a quote from Lance in a magazine story.

  But you didn’t have to put it in the film, people said. You could have cut away at any one of several moments. And they were right. I think.

  Suddenly, Blue, who’s been curled in my lap this whole time, for some mysterious important cat reason launches off my legs and onto floor. In his mad dash out of the room, he ricochets off my floor lamp, knocking it off-balance, and down it goes with a big clang.

  And that’s a wrap for the day.

  Mr. Jones sits by himself on the stone bench in the garden, his back to the camera. His eleven-year-old daughter, Keira, walks into frame. She looks confused and surprised to find him here, and for a moment, glances back over her shoulder as if to ask an unseen someone, Is this where you want me to go?

  “Hi, Daddy,” she says tentatively. Her hair is gathered in a tight bun off her face and she’s wearing a ballet leotard underneath her hoodie and jeans.

  “Hello, Sprite,” says Mr. Jones, because a well-regarded English professor at the college would only have a literary, classical-sounding pet name for his little girl.

  “What did you want to talk to me about?” asks Keira.

  “Have a seat.” And Keira does, but you can tell she’d rather not, because when someone tells you to have a seat before they talk to you, something is about to suck.

  Mr. Jones takes a deep breath and you can hear it rattle into the microphone he’s wearing.

  “You know how Mommy had to go to Massachusetts for a few nights?”

  “To visit her friend,” says Keira.

  “Right. Well.” Another rattle, amplified. “You need to know that she’s not coming back.”

  Keira is facing away from us, but we see her head cock sideways, the body language equivalent of a question mark.

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s going to live somewhere else.”

  “I don’t understand. How can she live somewhere else when we’re here?”

  Mr. Jones looks at his daughter for the first time, and she looks back. Now they’re both in profile.

  “That’s a good question, Sprite. I wish I knew the answer. She told me she needs to be away for a while.”

  When you hear this, you think of the earlier scenes in the film. The scene where Keira’s mother starts crying at dinner and locks herself in the bathroom. The interview where she seems only half there, lighting up a clove cigarette in the middle of the conversation, to the shock and horror of her husband.

  “But she’ll come back, right?” asks Keira.

  Even you know there’s no way to answer that. You think for sure Mr. Jones will say something like, “I hope so,” like most people would. But he does not. Because Mr. Jones has said that he’s a proponent of constant honesty with his child, he says, “No, Keira. I don’t believe she will.”

  Keira is silent for a moment as this truth, this reality that suddenly seems inevitable even to us, sinks in.

  Then she turns to the camera. She swivels her entire body to the other side of the bench and slides away from her father. In her effort to hide her expression from him, she is showing it to us.

  Her face.

  Take eleven years times a million, and that’s how much pain is on her face. That’s how much confusion, despair, and betrayal is on her face.

  The camera does not cut away.

  Instead, it zooms in close.

  Keira starts to sob.

  The camera does not move.

  For twenty long seconds, she weeps, and we watch. When the camera does cut away, it’s to a shot of Keira and her mother walking along the old Rail Trail that runs through town. Mrs. Jones—Allison—is a willowy blonde with skin several shades lighter than Keira’s, and she’s always seemed a little in awe of her daughter. In this brief scene, she ambles along behind Keira. Keira realizes she’s gotten ahead of her mom and stops, waits for her to catch up. Reaches out her hand. Mrs. Jones takes it and for a few steps they’re connected like that, until she releases Keira’s grasp and bends down to pick up a rock.

  She tosses the rock into the woods and the camera catches it bouncing once, then twice, then skidding to a stop in the dirt.

  To put a child’s worst moment on film, to turn her unspeakable heartache into entertainment for the masses, is absolute exploitation, said one critic. Don’t believe for a second that it’s anything else.

  Later, in interviews, Lance and Leslie said that Mr. Jones wanted them to film this scene, so somewhere out there, his ex-wife would know what she did. So other parents in similar situations, who had to have equally horrible conversations with their children, would feel less alone.

  But it was the way they did it, argued one writer. That unflinching cut. Most of the audience glances away from this girl’s face. Out of instinct and decency. Why didn’t the filmmakers have the same instinct and decency?

  Lance and Leslie never really answered that question, and that’s probably because there was no good way to do it, and they also knew they were wrong. I could see it in Leslie’s face during one interview that I sometimes watch online.

  Meanwhile, Keira disappeared from school for a while. Mr. Jones took a leave of absence to teach in Paris for two years. When they came back, Keira had changed, and not just because she had clothes everyone swooned over and this way of tying a scarf that defied physics. There was something confident and powerful about her, about the straightness of her neck and the glow of her skin. It seemed organic and not processed, and people flocked to it.

  When it came to Mrs. Jones, the parent grapevine offered up only a few tidbits. She was gone, for sure. Divorced, definitely. There were rumblings about mental health problems for which she refused to get treatment. Where she was, and whether or not Keira ever saw her—that was anyone’s guess. They guessed a lot, and then eventually, as the news got old and something else took its place, they stopped guessing.

  SIX

  Leslie once told me that a film isn’t made by shooting stuff but, rather, by editing it. The shooting is the inspiration and the ideas and the paint palette. The editing is the artist actually picking up the brush to accomplish the doing, the making something out of nothing.

  I think about this as the alarm clock snaps on with a radio commercial at 6:30 a.m. This is a big day. My first—and maybe only—Follow Day, where the crew will be tailing me morning to night, hopefully getting a wide and colorful palette full of Justine. Everyone else will get at least one as well, but for some reason they’ve chosen to start with me.

  The alarm is unnecessary, because I woke up at 3:00 a.m. and couldn’t get back to sleep, thinking about the Follow Day. Outlining it in my head. Punching it up with jokes here and there. For instance:

  Justine comes down for breakfast and opens the fridge. Upon seeing all the foil-wrapped blobs of ULOs (Unidentified LeftOvers), she says, “This isn’t a refrigerator. It’s a halfway house for good food gone bad!”

  Funny. Like she used to be. Back when she didn’t have to try.

  After I get out of bed and take a shower, I put on my pajamas again, which feels just wrong but this is what’s been asked of me. I open my door to call down to Lance, Leslie, and Kenny, who are waiting in the kitchen with my mom.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” I say as they appear in the upstairs hallway. Yes, that’s a gem I came up with at 4:23 a.m.

  “Another day of cinema vérité,” says Lance, yawning.

  “We’ll make
it a good one,” says Leslie, but without any of her usual enthusiasm.

  Kenny just nods at me. He’s a quiet type; maybe, as a sound guy, he’s used to letting other people make all the noise.

  As we prearranged, I let them into my room so they could get some shots of me picking out clothes. Surely to be intercut later with scenes of the others in their morning routines, chosen carefully for contrast and comedy.

  Of course I’ve already planned the outfit: black jeans, red low-top sneakers, and a navy blue T-shirt with a picture of a rock, a piece of paper, and a pair of scissors as gunslingers in a three-way standoff. But I pretend to look for these items, thumbing through exactly three other tops in my closet before tugging the chosen one off its hanger.

  Once I’m dressed, we put on my lavalier mic. I blow-dry my hair and keep my eyes on the pink streaks in the mirror, and not on the camera. I put on my eyeliner, then, as usual, rub most of it off.

  Downstairs, my mother already has breakfast and juice out on the table, leaving me with no excuse to open the fridge. Middle-of-the-night brilliance fades into early morning brain-deadness and I can’t think of a single damn witty thing to say here.

  Mom is baking her Panda Bear cupcakes for a last-minute order. She uses Thin Mints cut in half for ears, and Leslie finds this fascinating. She and Lance spend so much time trying to get some good shots of the little black-and-white faces that we get behind schedule and I’m going to be late for school.

  “It’s okay,” says Mom, “I’ll write you a note.” She needs this attention and frankly, I’m happy to share it. I pretend to be anxious to get going, and she pretends she doesn’t know I’m pretending. So far, we are playing ourselves just right.

  I pull open the heavy door to the school lobby and hold it for a moment, so Lance, who’s got the camera rolling, then Kenny, then Leslie, can follow close behind me.

  At the office, the front desk aide hands me my late pass and is much friendlier about this than she normally is about everything. On my way out, I catch sight of the bright green notice on a bulletin board. It’s the one that went home with every student two weeks ago, notifying them and their families of Lance and Leslie’s imminent presence at the school, along with a release letter that every parent had to sign if they were okay with their kid ending up in the film. I’m sure a few parents weren’t and didn’t, like the last two times. It was fun to see people’s faces blurred out in the finished product. I wonder who it will be this year.

  But we are on the move and I have to stay focused and aware, with the camera watching like this. I’ve missed homeroom, so our first stop is Journalism class, which starts in a few minutes. I can see Lance exclaiming over a latte: Journalism! The irony! Also, the class features not just me but Nate too, so that’s a whole lot of bang for their shooting buck.

  Here’s some information for the record. Length of time since this class began: twelve weeks. Number of times Nate has lowered himself to talk to me during said class: zero.

  Inside the classroom, our teacher, Mrs. Zandhoffer, is pushing four desks together so they make a little island of metal and Formica. There are several other islands like it throughout the room. She looks up and nods at Lance and Leslie, and I can tell they’ve already met. The crew quickly moves to a corner to get situated.

  Mrs. Z notices me scanning the desks and indicates one near her, saying, “Justine, you sit over here. I’m putting everyone in groups for a new project.”

  The bell rings and within seconds, the doorway has filled up with students. Everyone freezes when they notice the reconfigured desks and the camera and the boom mic, causing a bottleneck in the hallway. Within minutes, Mrs. Z has everyone assigned to their desk islands. Sharing mine are Lily and Michael, who are cool. There’s an empty seat.

  I notice that at the same time I notice Nate hasn’t arrived yet.

  On cue, he bursts in and does the same freeze everyone else did. But when he sees Lance and Leslie, he smiles. Waves with one hand, brushes his cowlick—a little chunk of blond hair that’s always sticking out to one side—with the other. Nate somehow makes this cheesy move seem natural, like something you’ve been hoping to see all day.

  Mrs. Z points at our table. Nate just nods and falls into the empty desk, then scans the three of us. His gaze catches on mine for a second, and one corner of his mouth twitches up like he knows he should smile at me, but just can’t make himself do it.

  Lily steals a look at the crew, then pulls out some lip gloss and begins to apply it. Heavily.

  “Act normal,” I say to her. “Remember, they’re just observing.”

  I realize I’ve just spit out one of the things Lance and Leslie kept telling us when we were six, and then again at eleven. We like to pretend we’re in kindergarten too, Lance would say with a wink, and our whole class would giggle. I look around to see who’s buying that line now. Most of the students in the class are busy getting settled, but a few keep glancing toward the camera. One kid, known jackass Marco Marretti, waits until Mrs. Z’s back is turned and waves both middle fingers at the camera, then laughs at this stroke of pure, subversive brilliance.

  “Today we start our unit on feature journalism,” announces Mrs. Z when all is finally quiet.

  I thought we weren’t supposed to do this unit until June.

  Lance has the camera pointed at us now. Kenny, behind him, holds the boom mic above his head with both hands, sticking it as far into the room as he can.

  Mrs. Z continues. “Each group is going to produce a newspaper supplement focused on whichever subject area you pull from this bowl.” She holds up a Tupperware dish and shakes it; something shuffles around inside. She walks over to the group nearest her and holds the bowl out to one of the kids, who reaches in, pulls out a piece of paper, and unfolds it. “Arts and Entertainment,” he announces, and his islandmates cheer.

  Mrs. Z makes her way around the room as the assignments are drawn. Health and Fitness. Money and Finance. Science and Technology. Finally, she comes to us, and offers the bowl to Nate. Of course, always Nate. Nate makes a show of feeling around for the last slip of paper, making everyone (but me) crack up, then produces the paper and opens it with a flourish. “Travel and Recreation. Boo-yah!”

  Mrs. Z smiles and says, “This edition will focus on local travel. No darting off to Atlantic City on your parents’ credit card and blaming it on your assignment.” Then she turns to the rest of the class. “I’m going to give each group a couple of examples from real newspapers. Your goal for this period is to figure out story assignments or at least a list of what you might want to cover.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Lance’s camera and it’s still trained on Nate and me. It takes everything I have not to turn and stare it down.

  “Okay,” Nate says as Mrs. Z plops a couple of news-papers in front of us. “Why don’t we do two stories on travel and two on recreation?”

  “That makes sense,” says Lily. “What about a Top Ten list of places to visit in the area?”

  “It should have more focus than that,” says Michael. “Like, historic sights, or sights for nature freaks or shopaholics.”

  “We could do the whole section as a collection of Top Ten lists . . .” adds Nate.

  Mrs. Z brushes past us. “Cute idea, but that doesn’t sound like it would require much actual reporting.” And then she’s gone.

  “What do you think, Justine?” asks Lily, like she’s just remembered I’m here.

  What do I think? What do I think? I glance at Nate, who has this Cameras? What cameras? look on his face that makes me want to wrap my hands around his neck, right at the spot where that gigantic Adam’s apple sits.

  “I think I need to be right back.”

  I get up and walk over to Mrs. Z, who has just sat down at her desk with a big sigh. Her hair, a neat black bob with bangs, barely moves as she looks up at me and frowns.

  “Yes, Justine?”

  I hook my finger at Lance to come join us. He turns off the camera,
places it gingerly on a bookcase and does as I’ve asked. Leslie follows. Kenny lowers the boom mic and leans against the wall.

  “What’s up?” asks Lance, leaning in for a huddle.

  “You guys arranged for Nate and me to be in the same group.”

  Lance and Mrs. Z exchange a guilty glance.

  “Is that a problem?” asks Mrs. Z. I can tell she was reluctant to do it.

  “It makes it easier for us to shoot you both,” Lance says matter-of-factly.

  I look at Leslie, expecting a comment, but she’s just staring at one of my pink stripes.

  “Well, it feels fake to me and we’ll be self-conscious,” I say, “and that will affect how we do on the actual assignment.”

  For a second I think they get it. Mrs. Z is nodding slightly.

  “I don’t feel self-conscious,” says a voice behind me. Nate steps up and slides into our huddle.

  I turn to him and he’s looking at me. Really looking at me, not just brushing a glance across the space I occupy. His expression is soft and friendly, and for a second I flash on the Nate he was five years ago in Five at Eleven. His hair was longish then, his green eyes larger, even though I know that’s impossible because eyeballs never grow.

  Is it Nate’s fault, really? He didn’t set this up. So why do I want to close that open look on his face? Zip it, lock it, pull it shut with a drawstring?

  “It feels fake to me,” I finally say, looking back at Nate for a second. “Fake,” I say again, to him. For him. The word seems to hit its mark, landing deep behind the carefully composed lines of his face. He looks at the floor.

  We’re silent for a moment, then finally Mrs. Zandhoffer takes over. “Okay, Justine. Your performance on this project is what matters most to me. We’ll switch you with someone else.”

  For the rest of the class, in my new location on the Arts and Entertainment island, I have no trouble ignoring the camera. I get assigned a story on an exhibit at the college art museum.